A team at NFER was responsible for the national evaluation of Creative Partnerships in its first two years. The evaluation included surveys of schools, creative partners, children and young people as well as interviews with parents.

The evaluation concluded that Creative Partnerships had moved quickly into implementation and that cross curricular projects involving true partnership working had a real potential to make a difference to schools.

The most commonly identified outcomes of Creative Partnerships for young people in case study schools were creativity, personal development and communication.

Compared with similar young people nationally, young people who attended Creative Partnerships activities made either similar or slightly better progress in their national curriculum assessments. Compared with other young people in the same schools, those known to have attended Creative Partnerships activities performed slightly better at all three key stages.